


5,578 Miles (to get back to you)

by firstdegreefangirl



Category: The Rookie (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Break Up, F/M, Feelings Realization, Hallucinations, Hotels, Pining, Post-Break Up, Road Trips, and I will die on that hill, and Tim will do whatever he has to do to get it back, rachel is NOT the villain, sometimes you don't know what you had until it's gone, what if Tim went to New York with Rachel?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25511716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstdegreefangirl/pseuds/firstdegreefangirl
Summary: It’s three days to drive across the country, stopping here and there to see landmarks along the way. Then there’s a fifth-story walkup to unpack, and Tim is sure it’s a better workout than he’s had since the military. But he and Rachel get the boxes emptied out and stacked against a wall, forgotten every time one of them takes the trash to out.Before he realizes it, he’s lived in New York for a month, and he’s calling it “home.”
Relationships: Tim Bradford/Lucy Chen, Tim Bradford/Rachel Hall
Comments: 95
Kudos: 210





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Me: But WHAT IF TIM WENT TO NEW YORK WITH RACHEL?  
> Daisy: NO NO NO tell me more  
> Me: *writes this*

“They have cops in New York too.” 

For the second time in as many minutes, Tim feels his world shift on its axis. 

_Rachel got her dream job. That’s great._

_Rachel is moving. To New York. That’s less great._

_Rachel just asked Tim to move to New York with her. That’s …_

_Something._

Surely, she isn’t really asking him to leave Los Angeles. He’s lived here his entire life. Everything he’s ever known is here. 

He doesn’t have an answer for her, so he asks about her apartment search, but her subtle invitation is on his mind all day. 

Because the more he thinks about it, he doesn’t have that much in LA anymore. No wife, no friends he doesn’t see at work every day, and after next month, no girlfriend. He has his career, sure, but Rachel’s right: he could transfer to the NYPD, join the nation’s biggest police department. 

And he can watch Rams games from anywhere. 

So two days later, he asks Grey for a recommendation letter to put with his transfer paperwork and finds out that he’ll be able to start with the next class of NYPD recruits in five weeks. He convinces Grey to keep it under wraps until the end of his last shift, sits down over drinks with the other TOs and all three rookies (he’d only invited Lucy as professional courtesy, since his move affected her training, but she brought them anyway) to break the news two days after his transfer was approved. 

It had been awkward, especially when Angela leaned over to hug him and tell him that she’d miss him. Not only had he not known what to say to that, but Nolan seemed to think it gave him an invitation to do the same thing when Tim came back with the next round of drinks. 

Maybe in New York, people won’t try to hug him so much. 

Three weeks later, he’s handing keys over to his new sublet and loading the last box into the cab of his truck. Most of his belongings are in the bed, but there’s a shoebox filled with the precious few personal affects that mattered enough to him to bring along – a couple of photo albums, some of the love notes he and Isabel had passed back and forth in academy, and a manila envelope with his name written across the front. Inside the envelope is a receipt with his signature scrawled at the bottom, for three rookies’ worth of after-work drinks. 

He’s not sure why he didn’t throw it away as soon as he’d paid the bill. Or when he got home that night, or any number of times since. Or why he waited to slide it into the box until Rachel had gone back to her apartment, ready to fill her own boxes with her own memories. 

It just hadn’t felt like the kind of story he could explain the importance of. So he hadn’t tried to, but he still packed the envelope away to drive across the country. 

And now the box it’s in sits on the passenger seat of his truck, on top of a thin fleece blanket covered in white and brown fur. 

* * *

Lucy had come by the night before to pick Kojo up, having pestered him into letting her adopt him back. She made some good points – especially about the apartment he’d shown her pictures of not being big enough for him to be comfortable there. Still, he was surprised to find himself reluctant to pack his toys and treats and pass the leash to Lucy at the end of the evening. 

She’d helped him load the back of the truck, carefully let him lead the conversation. Tim trained her for almost a year, though, and he could tell that she was trying to put off her departure. But they could only kill so much time before she had to stand up from the couch he was leaving behind and pat her thighs, whistling for Kojo. 

He had walked her to the door, rolled his eyes when she couldn’t get Kojo to sit long enough for her to clip his leash on. When she stood up, he could see the tears shining in her eyes. Neither of them said anything for a moment, then he cleared his throat. 

“Well, it’s been fun. You’ll make a great cop, Boot, and I want to hear all about it.” 

“Yeah.” She pressed her lips together and looked up at him. “You, uh … you were a great TO. Send my apologies to the poor NYPD cop who has you for a boot.” 

“I will.” There was a tickle in his throat, so he didn’t say anything else, but she held his hand out for him to shake, and he surprised them both when he pulled her in for a quick hug. 

It was over almost before either of them could realize it had happened, and Kojo whined beside them, so Lucy reached down to pick up his leash. 

“Seriously, Tim. You’d better text me first sometimes, if you want me to send pictures of this guy.” 

“We’ll see.” He stepped forward as she passed through the doorway. “Be good, Lucy.” 

* * *

But he’s not letting himself think about the past as he turns the key in his ignition and sets his course for Rachel’s apartment. He’s got the future in front of him – their future – and it’s time to start moving toward it. 

He meets Rachel in front of her building, leaned against the trunk of her car. There’s really no reason for him to get out of the truck, not when they’re both packed up and hitting the road right away, but he does anyway. She smiles at him, looking between their vehicles until he draws her gently toward him for a soft kiss. 

It’s a tender moment, a celebration of what they’re doing together, and they don’t need exchange any more words when he steps back, other than to reaffirm that she’s leading the way. 

Tim climbs back into his truck, turns the key again and lets Rachel lead him away from everything he’s ever known and into their new life. 


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Rachel start getting settled in their new life together.

The first few weeks pass in a whirlwind. It’s three days to drive across the country, stopping here and there to see landmarks along the way. Then there’s a fifth-story walkup to unpack, and Tim is sure it’s a better workout than he’s had since the military. But he and Rachel get the boxes emptied out and stacked against a wall, forgotten every time one of them takes the trash to out. 

It’s a tiny apartment, smaller than the first place he lived on his own, but it’s theirs. He remembers how nice it can be, coming home to someone at the end of the day. They try all the takeout restaurants near the apartment, settle on a favorite Chinese place and a regular pizza shop. 

Everything feels nice and quiet and normal, and Tim knows that he made the right choice. He starts running at Central Park in the mornings, smiles at the same barista when he stops for a coffee, plain black, on the way home. 

Before he realizes it, he’s lived in New York for a month, and he’s calling it “home.” 

He starts at the NYPD academy, and figures it must be how Nolan felt a year ago. 

Except that he’s got over half a career behind him, and is mostly just in the academy because he doesn’t know the new department policies. The fundamentals are the same, so he finds himself bored a lot of the time, passing the time by texting Angela when the instructors aren’t looking, critiquing their tactical measures. 

Every couple of days, true to his word, he sends Lucy a text on his lunch break. The first one, he asks if she’s gotten her new partner shot yet and rolls his eyes when she replies with a picture of her middle finger in front of the dashboard of an LAPD patrol car. 

Then they start patrol car training in New York and Tim is riding up and down the sidewalks of Times Square in a glorified Matchbox car. It hardly qualifies as a vehicle, in his book, but it’s the closest he’s come to driving anything since he parked his truck in the monthly lot two days after they crossed state line. 

As more weeks go by, the newness starts to wear off, and Tim can see the city for what it really is through the windshield of his so-called “cruiser.” 

There are people _everywhere_ , and most of them are more than happy to tell him exactly what they think of his dinky blue siren chirping behind them on the sidewalk. 

He asks his training officer if there’s a city ordinance against police-directed profanity, but instead of the laugh he’s expecting, he gets a congratulations on knowing the difference between a law and an ordinance. 

Waiting for the train home that night, he watches a man relieve himself right there on the platform and wrinkles his nose. It’s a violation, and he could tell you which one, but it wouldn’t matter, because he’s already been told better than arresting a homeless person. 

Because apparently there’s enough aid groups here that they’ve become a protected population. 

A protected population that pisses on subway tracks at the rock bottom of America’s cesspool. 

And who takes a subway, anyway? There are long-term parking lots on every block; why have a car if you’re just going to ride the train everywhere? Besides, if you drive you don’t have to put up with everyone else in the subway car with you, which is without a doubt the worst part of his daily commute. 

Worse still, if you go underground, it’s colder than it is at street level. Which, Tim is learning, isn’t actually all that warm, even in early June. Back in LA, he’d have been wearing T-shirts and jeans, maybe the occasional pair of basketball shorts on a particularly hot day. 

Instead, he’s looking for long sleeves with every day off he has, and his freshly-minted NYPD windbreaker swishes obnoxiously every time he moves his arms at work. 

Really, the best thing about New York is that Rachel is there. She beats him home every night, bursting at the seams with stories about her new job. Truly, this has been perfect for her, and Tim is always happy to see the way she radiates excitement at all the good she’s getting to do for the children in her office every day. She’s thriving in New York, dressing up their apartment with little touches of the city, things she picks up from street vendors on her walk home, reading over every takeout menu that appears under their front door and finding new places for them to go on the off chance that they have the same day off. 

They’re having a lot of fun, exploring the new city, taking in the sights and sounds in the evenings and falling asleep together every night. 

But it doesn’t take very long for Tim to realize that Rachel is the _only_ good thing about New York. He hardly ever goes out on his own, unless it’s to go to work or pick up dinner. He’s still running in the park, but it feels more like a chore than the outlet it had been on the sidewalks in LA. 

Still, things are good. And this is what relationships are, right? Sacrifice, being happy making your partner happy. 

So he doesn't say anything, not even when he’s texting his friends across the country. Besides, every Friday night, just like clockwork, Rachel’s phone rings when they’re finishing up dinner. 

“Oh,” she says, holding her hand over her mouth while she chews and swallows rapidly. “It’s Lucy. Change the channel if you want, I’m going to take this.” 

And every time, he nods and reaches for the remote. 

“Tell her I say hi.” 

It’s not like he couldn’t text Lucy himself. It’s not even like he _doesn’t_ text Lucy himself; they’ve found their own routine of exchanging iconic pictures of the city for snapshots of Kojo lounging on her furniture or licking leftover food off of her plate. 

But there’s something different about knowing that Rachel is in touch with her too. It feels like something they’re united by, even as their lives here are becoming so radically different. One night a week, Rachel is telling her hello from the both of them, and it’s somehow the highlight of his week, even though he’s never said a word to her. 

Then he starts seeing her. 


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim sees Lucy _everywhere._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was by FAR one of the most amusing parts of this story for me to write. I just hope y'all giggle as much as I did.

It’s a subtle thing at first. He goes to pick up the Indian food they’d ordered, and the woman working the counter has her dark brown hair swept into a tight bun at the bottom of her head. Her features are gentle, her jawline sloping gently into a pointed chin, and for a second, she looks just like the rookie he’d left behind. 

He wants to say her name, find out when she’d moved to New York, ask when she started working here. But before he can, he blinks his eyes and she’s gone. The cashier hands him a bag of food, but she doesn't look like Lucy anymore, except in the broadest, most common ways. There’s millions of women who are shorter than him and wear their brown hair pulled back, probably in this city alone. 

So he smiles, takes the food and tells her to have a nice night, shaking his head as he leaves. 

_That was strange_ , he thinks as he steps back into the flow of sidewalk traffic. But it’s Friday night, which means that Lucy is going to call Rachel, and he was probably just thinking about that when he walked into the dining room. Brains are funny like that; confusing things people think with things they're seeing, and he knows that. 

It was probably just a misfire, a quick crossing of the wrong signals, and he doubts it will happen again. 

Until two days later, when he’s picking his uniforms up at the dry cleaner’s. 

This time, he’s not even thinking about Lucy as he hears the bell chime when he opens the door. But he steps up to the counter, and all he can see is a fuzzy green cardigan, wavy brown hair and the tiny smirk he’d gotten used to seeing every time she made a good call on duty. 

“Lucy” hands him the hangers, and the mirage starts to fade when their hands brush. He remembers how small her hands were next to his, how much less of the Glock was covered when she pulled her gun. And there’s no way she’d have let her skin get as dry and calloused as the fingers that are touching his. He’s never met a woman who had skin that raw, even on the roughest arrests he’d made back in LA. 

Before he can process it, though, she’s telling him to “have a great day, and stay safe out there, Officer,” and her voice is wrong, all wrong. It shouldn’t be that deep, and Lucy doesn’t have a Hispanic accent. 

When he looks up from his laundry, she’s gone, and he recognizes the man in front of him as the owner. He’s a shorter man than Tim, rounder too, and balding. 

_Nothing like Lucy; what the hell?_

“Thanks, Mr. Nunez. You too.” 

The bell chimes again when he leaves, and he wonders if he should text Lucy while he eats lunch today. Probably so, since it’s been a few days since he heard from her. But the last time he’d read a message from her on duty, his TO had asked if his girlfriend was actually working at Social Services if she had time to text him at 2 in the afternoon. 

He hadn’t known how to answer, so he’d just rolled his eyes and said that he was here to re-learn to be a cop, not get relationship advice. 

He’d waited until they were parked out front of the bakery Officer Jefferson frequented while they were on patrol to reopen the message. It was a picture of Kojo, his chin resting on a knee that was unmistakably Lucy’s and staring at a bowl of salad balanced on her other leg. 

_Someone likes his veggies_ , she’d captioned it, and he couldn’t help but smile as he tried to find a good reply. 

He’d typed and erased three messages before he landed on _’b_ _et_ _he likes steak better_ _’_ and pocketed his phone again. 

Today, he’s not sure. He’s not sure what he’d say to her, not sure if she’d want to hear from him when they’re both supposed to be living their own lives, not sure why he’s worried about that, given that she’d made him promise to keep in touch when he left. 

Somehow “the Mexican man who runs my dry cleaner’s looked like you today and I think it might be because I miss you” doesn’t feel like something he needs to be advertising to her, so he decides that if anything else notable happens this morning, he’ll reach out. If not, he’ll keep the dry cleaning adventure to himself. 

Not 20 minutes into his shift, Tim realizes he’ll be texting Lucy at lunch. It’s not the first officer-involved car accident he’s worked in his law enforcement days, but it isthe first one involving two NYPD officers, one of whom is a horse. Jefferson parks their Matchbox shop on the sidewalk in Central Park, watching as FDNY tends to the cyclist who’d turned in front of the mounted officer and spooked the horse. 

There are no major injuries, which is a relief, because it means that Tim doesn’t feel bad when he acknowledges the humor in the situation. He’s just finished up the paperwork (on a clipboard balanced against the steering wheel, because that’s what passes for an “office” around here) when they break for lunch. 

He bites into a falafel wrap and texts Lucy. 

_Bet you’ve never filed an equine_ _accident_ _report_. 

She replies almost right away, and they spend the next 20 minutes cracking jokes about if the horse would be evidence or an officer. 

It’s the best afternoon at work he’s had since he left LA, the closest to normal he’s felt in almost two months, but he won’t let himself think about that after he clocks out, too worried that Lucy might pop up somewhere else in the city. 

Somewhere along the way, Tim realizes that he’s thought about Lucy more than anyone else he left behind. In fact, he’s thinking about her almost as often as he thinks about Rachel, and he sees Rachel every day. 

He doesn’t think it’s love, not yet. But he thinks maybe it could be, if he let himself get there. And he feels awful about it, awful about having led Rachel on, moving across the country to start a life with her and not being able to shake the thought of Lucy everywhere he goes. 

Part of him feels even worse when he doesn’t see Lucy again, but he tries to put that away and focus on everything he has in front of him in New York. 

Even if most of it is cold and wet and rude, and none of it is Lucy, he owes it to himself and to Rachel to give this a fighting chance. 

It’s another week before he sees her again, this time after the least interesting shift he’s had since the transfer. They’d written six jaywalking citations and he’d watched Jefferson help a woman find the restaurant she was meeting her sister at for lunch. 

Slow days always put him in a bad mood, and to top it off, the train he needed to take home had derailed. One of three trains he knew how to navigate in the entire city, and it’s delayed for at least two hours. 

He can’t wait two hours to get home, and there’s no way he’s going to walk seven miles in the drizzly rain he’d been putting up with all afternoon. 

So he turns to look at the station map posted on the wall, trying to figure out an alternate route. A woman steps up next to him, and she looks far more knowledgeable than he is about the subway, so he swallows his pride and faces her. 

“Excuse me, I’m new to the city. Which of these will get me toward 130th and Lexington?” 

She smiles and points at the map, and it’s a voice he’d know anywhere. 

“Just take the yellow one here up to …" but he stops listening when she faces him full on. 

It’s Lucy. Again. Except this time, the resemblance is so perfect that for a moment he wonders if he hadn’t heard Rachel tell him she was coming to visit. 

Tim knows it’s rude, knows that he’s a physically commanding man who’s talking to a smaller, younger woman, and knows exactly how it could be perceived, but he can’t help staring at her. Even after her mouth has stopped moving, she’s still smirking and he can’t stop looking at her. 

Her hand waves in front of his face, and it’s finally enough for him to shake off the stupor. 

“Sorry, uh, what was that?” He tries to look remorseful, but he’s really just hoping that Lucy will say something else, that even for a second, it’ll feel like being in a shop with her in LA. 

He’s not surprised when she rolls her eyes and mutters something that sounds profane as she walks away without repeating herself. 

Because of course she does, because that’s what women do when men stare at them on subway platforms, ignoring the directions they asked for in the first place. Because that’s a weird and creepy thing to do. 

And it’s the icing on the cake, because he still doesn’t know what train he needs, and he knows he can’t ask another stranger for directions after the way that ended the first time. 

So he rolls his eyes and turns around to climb back up the stairs out of the station, cursing the city and everything about it with each step he takes. He emerges at street level and sticks his arm out, hoping it won’t take long for a cab to stop and take pity on him. The rain has lightened up to a drizzle, so at least he’s not getting soaked, and a cab pulls to the side relatively quickly. 

It might have been better if the driver hadn’t gone through the puddle in the gutter and soaked his jeans up to the knees, but that seems on par with the afternoon he’s had, so he just grimaces as the denim sticks to his calves when he sits down. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Until Tuesday, my loves! 
> 
> You know where to find me for yelling purposes: here, or also at firstdegreefangirl on tumblr


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim comes home from work, soaking wet and pissed off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's installment is alternatively titled "Tim Expresses One (1) Whole Entire Feeling, And It Pays Off"

He’s back to the apartment in half an hour, trudging up the stairs and seething about how much money he had to spend on a taxi, just because his train was out of service. 

At least Rachel is home when he gets there, smiling at him as he comes through the door. 

“Hey, I ordered dinner already. That noodle place you like; it should be here in 20 minutes or so.” 

“Unless they need to take the damn train.” He mutters, shrugging out of his windbreaker and hanging it by the door. 

“What?” When he looks up, Rachel steps back. “Alright, crabby-pants. How about you go change, and we’ll put a movie on or something?” 

He doesn’t say anything as he walks past her, and he feels bad about it. But he knows he’d feel even worse if he unleashed all of his frustration on her, so he goes to their room and puts on a pair of worn-in sweats. Before he goes back out to face the world, he stares at his reflection in the mirror and wonders when he started to look so haggard all the time. Usually, his eyes are only this hollow after days of double overtime, not just one boring shift. 

The cold water feels good when he splashes it against his skin, so he indulges himself with a quick shower, letting cool water run over his body until the frustration doesn't feel so hot in his chest. He redresses quickly and grabs a beer on his way to join Rachel on the couch. 

“Sorry, I took a shower. Long day.” He sighs and drapes his arm across the couch behind her, but she doesn’t lean into his side like she usually does. “Rach?” 

“You hate it here.” She sighs, but there’s no question in her voice. 

“It’s … different.” He’s trying to be diplomatic, but he can tell that Rachel hears the meaning behind his words, so he tries again. “I’m adapting.” 

“You’re suffering.” 

She's right. 

_Why does his girlfriend have to have a_ _psych_ _degree? Why does the woman he loves have to have a psych degree?_

He doesn’t invite the thought into his brain, but it appears anyway as he thinks about all the times Lucy saw right through him sitting in the shop. 

“I’ll get there. You love it here.” He tips his beer toward her, and when she smiles, he notices the sadness in her eyes. 

“You shouldn’t have to, Tim. I care about you, and I’m so glad you gave this a chance. We both would have regretted it, I think, if we hadn’t tried this together.” 

_He’s regretted it almost every day._

“I don’t regret taking a chance on us, Rachel.” That much is true, he knows. Rachel has never been the problem here. If anything, she’s been the one thing that kept him grounded, even when everything else around him was terrible. 

“I’m glad.” She smiles again, and reaches for his hand. He lets her take it between both of hers. “But I can’t watch you do this to yourself. You’re so miserable, and I hate the thought that it’s because of me.” 

“It’s not—” He tries to correct her, but she squeezes his hand and cuts him off. 

“You wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t asked you to be. You‘d still be in California, with your friends, and the job you loved.” 

“I’m still a cop, Rachel. It's—” 

“Tim, honey, if I have to hear you say one more thing about your little sidewalk police car, you might have to arrest me.” She chuckles, but it sounds like she wants to cry. “You gave this a shot, and I’ll always appreciate that. But now it’s my turn to do something that you’ll appreciate down the road. I’m not holding you here any longer. Go home. Go back where you belong.” 

He doesn't know what to say. He should argue, he knows. Maybe tell Rachel that he’s in love with her, that he wants to be here with her. 

But he won’t lie to her. She deserves more respect than that, he owes her more than that. Especially if she’s doing something so selfless and letting him go home because she cares about him. 

“You’re sure? Because if you don’t want me to go—” She cuts him off again. 

“And that’s exactly why I’m telling you to. Maybe we’ll cross paths again someday, get to catch up. But I want you to be happy, Tim. You should be happy. Stay as long as you need to box everything up, but don’t linger on my account.” 

“Can we start that now?” He doesn’t know where it comes from, but suddenly the only thing he wants to do is get out of town, back on the road to California. It’ll already take him at least three days to get there, and he doesn't want to wait around longer than he must. 

But Rachel's face falls for just the briefest second. She schools her features quickly, but it still stings when Tim realizes how much she’s giving up for him. 

He’s not sure what he can say to make her feel better, though, so when she nods, he stands up and busies himself with re-taping the boxes they still hadn’t taken down to the trash. 

It makes him wonder if they’d both known deep down that this wasn’t going to work. 

They’re both quiet as he takes his clothes out of the drawers and off of their hangers and passes them to Rachel to box away. It doesn’t take long, and he only hesitates for a moment before he hands her his NYPD uniform shirts. 

He thinks about leaving them behind, maybe throwing them away, but something stops him. Something deep in his gut tells him that he should hang onto them, just like he’d kept his LAPD uniforms the first time he moved. They’re a chronicle of this stage in his career, the brief detour he’d taken before he realized how much he really had to leave behind in California. 

And it feels like a reminder not to throw things away before he knows what they mean to him. 

When the food arrives, they take a break to eat, sitting on opposite corners of the couch. The easy camaraderie between them is gone, and Tim knows that he can’t stay even one more night. There’s no place for him in Rachel’s bed anymore. 

Besides, the sooner he leaves, the sooner he’ll be back home. 

She’d ordered from his favorite restaurant, but somehow he knows even as he takes the last bite that he’s not going to miss the pasta dishes and fresh breadsticks. There’s plenty of places he can get Italian food in LA. 

Almost before he knows it, they’re carrying his boxes back down the stairs together, almost too civilly for a couple that’s just broken up. When the last one is stacked back into the bed, his shoebox back in its spot on top of Kojo’s blanket, they find themselves standing in front of his truck in awkward silence, both trying to figure out what to say. 

“Thanks for coming out here with me.” Rachel scuffs her toe on the curb and won’t meet his eyeline. “Seriously, I’m glad we tried this, and it was nice having a familiar face while I got settled.” 

“Anytime.” He crams his hands in his pockets. “You should know … you were the best part of this city for me. I mean that, Rachel.” 

“Yeah.” Her lips press into a thin line. “I know I was. You’re sure you’ve got everything?” 

The conversation is over, and he knows it. 

“Think so. If not, I’ll pay for shipping.” 

“Don’t worry about it.” 

Tim holds his hand out for her to shake at the same time as she opens her arms to hug him. They both hesitate for a moment, then laugh as they switch positions. Finally, he pulls her into his arms and kisses her cheek. 

“Take care, Rachel. If you’re ever back in LA, look me up.” It’s not _keep in touch,_ and they both know it, but it’s what he can offer her now. 

“Yeah, you too, if you come back to the big city. I won’t keep you any longer, it’s almost 11 already.” He can tell that she wants to offer him one more night, but knows he wouldn’t accept. “Drive safe.” 

“Thanks.” 

As endings go, it shouldn’t feel satisfactory. There’s hundreds of words unsaid between them, no goodbye drinks or last adventures in the city. Still, as Tim starts his truck and pulls out into traffic, he finds that he’s not upset with how things ended. He gave New York an honest try, gave Rachel an honest try, and they still didn’t work out. 

But as he drives through the Holland Tunnel, he sees the first sign for I-80 and knows that he’s on the right path now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Until Saturday, my loves!


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim starts his journey home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short update this time, but even a journey of a thousand years begins with just one step

Tim stops right before the first highway change, pulling off at a gas station to fill his tank and use the bathroom. Almost as an afterthought, he realizes that it’s close to midnight and feels the pull of the coffee machine in the corner of the convenience store. 

He reaches for the largest paper cup they have, knows he’ll need the caffeine if he’s going to keep driving tonight. It’s lukewarm, but still burns his tongue with how bitter it is, but he chokes it down anyway, figuring that maybe the acrid taste will keep his mind sharp too. 

It doesn’t work, but Tim pushes on anyway. He blasts the radio, even reaches down to turn on the air conditioning to let the cold air keep him awake. The combined effects of his techniques keep his focus just clear enough that he can drive through what's left of New Jersey and cross into Pennsylvania. Back on the road, he calls NYPD dispatch and asks to be connected to the chief's office, where he leaves a voicemail withdrawing from the academy program and cutting his last real tie to the city. When he pulls over again, planning to take a short rest and put some more miles behind him, he looks at the GPS on his phone and finds that he’s halfway through the state. 

Between the exhaustion pulling at him, and the realization that it’s 2 a.m. and he’s been driving for four hours, he decides it’s as good a time as any to stop for the night. 

There’s a motel sign a few blocks ahead of him, ‘VACANCY’ lit up in bright red neon letters against the dark sky. He pulls himself together enough to find a parking place and slides the shoebox off of the front seat as he opens his door. 

It’s not a glamorous hotel, some budget brand he’s never heard of, but the doors open in front of him and he sees Lucy standing at the front desk, wearing an off-the-rack red polo embroidered with the vague logo he recognizes from the sign out front. 

She’s nice, but Lucy always is so he’s hardly surprised. It’s late enough at night that he’s able to talk her into a room rate that’s almost alarmingly low, but Tim hasn’t ever had a problem talking Lucy into giving him his way. All it took tonight was a forced smile and a chuckle as he asked if there was any way she could drop the price a little lower for a guy trying to get home in the middle of the night. 

He takes his key and circles the outside of the building until he finds the room number on the envelope, and as soon as he’s through the door, the rock-bottom price makes a lot more sense. 

Maybe he’s less charming than he’d thought, and the discount was just because of the mysterious stains on the carpeting. He steps further into the room and grimaces when he notices a faint yellow splotch on the bedspread. His box and a change of clothes for the morning go on the small table in the corner, after he wipes it off with the cuff of his sleeve, and he pulls back the bedding. 

Mercifully, the mattress looks decent. It’s not going to be comfortable, but he won’t wake up bedbug-bitten, so it’s good enough. But as he pulls the sheets back up, he finds them speckled with stains and hair and knows he can’t safely sleep between the covers. He looks around the room, but doesn’t trust the extra blanket folded up in the drawer, until finally an idea hits him. 

He ducks back out to the truck and pulls Kojo’s blanket off of the seat, then spreads it out on top of the bedspread. As he pulls his Glock out of the shoebox, Tim thinks about taking his flannel off, but instead finds himself turning the fan up and putting a hoodie on. 

_The more layers between his skin and that comforter, the better._

He clicks the safety off and sets the gun on the bedside table, laying down and folding his arms across his chest. His eyes close, but before he can fall asleep, his muscles spasm and he’s sitting bolt upright in bed. 

_He quit the NYPD and started driving across the country with no actual plan_. 

What the hell is he thinking? He doesn't have a job in LA, his sublet signed a six-month contract, he’s got _nothing_ there. His friends are there, and that’s one up on New York, but friends don’t keep the lights on. Which won’t matter if he doesn't find a place to live. But he can’t pay for that unless he has a job. 

He takes a deep breath and lays back down. 

First thing in the morning, he’ll call Grey and see how many favors he has left to cash in with the LAPD. That thought offers him some comfort; he’s got a plan to start rebuilding his life in California. 

But there’s nothing he can do until daybreak, so Tim makes himself close his eyes again, and the military instincts take over long enough to let him fall into a fitful sleep. He can tell that he won’t be _well_ rested in the morning, but he’ll at least be rested, and that will have to be good enough. 

Besides, how much sleep can he really expect to get for $47 and tax? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you on Thursday! Thanks for reading; this is keeping me on track with what day it is!


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim spends another day on the road, thinking about what's waiting for him back in LA. And who's waiting for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, Tuesday got away from me, so it's 1 a.m. as I'm posting, but we'll just call it that I'm on Pacific time today, where it's just turning 11 p.m. on Tuesday?
> 
> Making up for a short update last time with over 2k of Tim's travels, though!

Tim gives up on sleep by 9 in the morning, making his peace with the few hours he was able to cobble together. Between his instincts waking him up with every passing noise, knowing that even the deadbolt on the door is cheap enough to offer little security, and the near-constant barrage of thoughts, he’s frankly impressed that he managed as much rest as he did. 

He puts his feet on the floor, momentarily surprised to feel the cushioning of his boots instead of the cheap carpeting, and stretches until his back pops. His jaw cracks when he yawns, and he knows he’ll need coffee to get his morning underway. 

It doesn’t take long to change clothes and fold the blanket back underneath the box on the truck seat. Before long, he’s tucking his pistol into his waistband and pulling around to the main office to turn in his keys and grab some breakfast. 

There’s nobody at the front desk, so he lingers a moment before dropping the keys over the counter and wandering over to the trays of food on the other side of the lobby. 

Absolutely none of it looks palatable. He’s hungry, but there’s no way that he can bring himself to stomach anything that was prepared in a place that looks like this. Even the coffee is questionable, but he figures that it can’t actually be _dangerous,_ and even the worst tasting cup will get the blood flowing better in his veins. So he fills a flimsy paper cup and carries it with him back to the truck, eager to put the bedbug inn behind him and get closer to where he knows he needs to be. 

He’s right about the coffee. It’s barely drinkable, but helps wash down the gas station beef jerky he chews on as he flies down the highway. There’s only another hour left across Pennsylvania, and he stops halfway through Ohio to top off his gas tank and buy another cup of coffee. This time, it’s less bitter, but still lukewarm. 

He’ll never understand how people pay money to intentionally drink cold coffee, but it’s still better than nothing. 

The radio station changes every couple hundred miles, but Tim hardly notices the different songs and the scramble of genres in the speakers. Sometimes it’s empty static, but he makes no effort to scan for something new, just leaves the dial parked on the same station he listens to in LA. There, it’s classic rock, but right before he crosses into Indiana, he notices that it’s playing overly cheerful Christian pop and smacks the volume dial until he’s riding in silence. 

Right across state line, he pulls off at a truck stop hoping he can find something to eat. His stomach has been growling for a couple of hours, and he’s been out of beef jerky even longer than that, but he wouldn’t let himself stop until he absolutely had to. 

The clock on the dashboard blinks 2:30, and he’s trying to remember if he’s hit the time zone yet or not. Either way, it’s well past lunchtime, especially for a guy who skipped out on breakfast to avoid food poisoning. So he parks and walks in, glancing at the fast food logos listed on the neon sign out front. 

There’s a value meal calling his name, if only for the simplicity, and he pulls his phone out as he drops his plastic tray on the table. He doesn't work for the NYPD anymore, but he’s got at least one phone call to make before he actually has a job again. 

So he starts chewing on a couple of French fries and pulls his old sergeant's contact out of the list, tapping the ‘dial’ icon. 

Grey picks up on the third ring, and he must have looked at the name on his screen before he answers, because all he says by way of greeting is, “Tim?” 

He’s momentarily surprised not to hear Grey address him as “Officer Bradford,” but he supposes he’s not his officer anymore. At least, temporarily, he hopes. 

“Hey, Sarge. How’s it going?” 

“Not bad. LA hasn’t crumbled without you, if that’s why you’re calling.” Grey chuckles. “How’s life in the big city?” 

“Actually, the second question is why I’m calling. I’m in Indiana right now, by about 30 miles.” 

“Indiana? Isn’t that a little bit outside your new jurisdiction?” 

“I’m … between jurisdictions at the moment.” Tim chooses his words carefully, wondering if he shouldn’t have taken a little bit more time before he called to think about what he wanted to say. “On my way back to California.” 

“Rachel’s new job didn’t work out?” He can hear the curiosity in Grey’s voice. 

“Rachel, actually. Uh, we didn’t work out.” 

“Well I’m sorry to hear that, Tim. She seemed like a good match for you.” 

“Yeah. Ah, yeah. Maybe in another lifetime. Seems like I’ve got a few of those on the list, though.” He thinks briefly of Isabel before Grey replies. 

“Well, if you’re coming back to LA, maybe you’ll be able to work one of them out.” There’s something knowing in his tone that Tim doesn’t care to think about. He knows what he wants to come back to, _who_ he wants to come back to, but he’s not ready to count her off the list for this lifetime quite yet. 

“Maybe so. But you know, I’ll need a job if I’m going to do it, and I was hoping there might still be an opening with my name on it at Mid-Wilshire?” 

He eats through the rest of his fries while Grey tells him that they haven’t had any takers for his old position yet, so he should be able to pull some strings with the brass and bring him back on as a training officer. 

“I’ll see what I can do, but you’ll probably have to retake the sergeant’s exam again.” 

“I can do that,” He agrees quickly, knowing it’s a small price to pay for having jumped ship for two months. “Not so sure I want to be moving up quite yet anyway.” 

Grey hums noncommittally, then tells Tim to expect a call from the command staff to verify his rehire and hangs up. 

By the time he’s off the phone, his burger has gone mostly cold, but it still tastes better than anything else he’s had all day, so it’s easy for him to polish it off in just a few bites. He’s just finished eating and is standing up to throw his trash away when his phone vibrates again. 

It's not the call from the LAPD, but he hadn’t figured they’d call this soon. Instead, he looks at the screen and sees a notification that he’s got a text from Lucy. 

He has nothing to hide from the strangers in an Indiana rest stop, so he doesn’t even try to conceal his smile when he opens the app and looks at the new photo message at the end of their thread. 

Lucy beams at him from the screen, crouched down next to Kojo. He can see the trees behind them, and the way her hair is halfway fallen out of its sweaty ponytail, and figures they’ve just finished a mid-day run. Kojo’s tongue is hanging out of his mouth, and Tim could swear he’s smiling at the camera too. 

The caption makes him laugh, right there in the dining room. 

_One of us earned a glass of wine tonight. The other earned some belly rubs._

He immediately thinks of a dozen things he could reply, but none of them feel right. 

_I’m on my way home_ is at the top of the list, but he doesn’t want to tell her that with a text message. He’s not sure how he’s going to bring it up, but not like this. 

_You both look incredible_ crosses his mind, but it’s way too forward, given that he hasn’t given Lucy any indication of his feelings yet. 

_Can’t wait to join you guys next time_ is closer, but still too much of a giveaway that he’s coming back to LA. 

Finally, he settles on a simple reply and locks his phone before using the bathroom and getting back on the road. 

_Miss my running buddy._ It’s close enough to the truth, but he knows Lucy will assume that he’s referring to Kojo, and that’s only half-true. 

He doesn’t stop again for five hours, across the rest of Indiana and half of Illinois, until the endless scape of I-80 stretched in front of him makes his eyes weary. The gauge on the dash says he could stand to fill up again, so he starts watching for a billboard that offers a promising dinner option. 

Three exits later, he’s pulling into a gas station and waiting impatiently for the tank to fill. As soon as it turns off, he’s turning toward the sandwich shop attached to the convenience store. 

_A man can only handle so many fast food_ _burgers in a day._

He carries his Italian sub back out to the truck and parks facing the freeway to eat enough of it that he can get further down the road before stopping for the night. Half of the sandwich gets wrapped back up and set in the passenger seat, just in case he needs something for breakfast in the morning. 

Driving through the middle of America proves every bit as boring as the movie stereotypes had told Tim it would be. Cows and fields, fields and cows, with only the occasional city to break up the monotony. 

Tim wonders how he made this drive the first time and didn’t notice. He’s going in reverse this time, sure, but the highway and small towns haven’t changed. It’s still flat and open and unbelievably _dark_ at night. The stars are pretty for half an hour or so, but after that, he’d just like to be able to see more than the beam of his own headlights against the open road. 

But the more he thinks about it – and he has plenty of time to think, and very little else to pay attention to – the more he realizes that he’d hardly noticed any of the trip out. He has no idea how he let himself get all the way across the country with tunnel vision, but he supposes it was probably to do with how focused he was on being excited for Rachel. And for himself. 

And the way that he’s an afterthought tacked onto the end of that, even in his own mind, makes him wonder why he ever even moved at all. He was excited for Rachel, happy to be part of her life, but he’d been so _focused_ on being happy. Somehow, Tim thinks, it’s not quite happiness if you have to focus carefully on maintaining it. Maybe if he’d have known that a little sooner, he wouldn’t have gotten things so tangled up. 

But maybe if he hadn’t gone to New York, hadn’t seen Lucy everywhere she wasn’t, he wouldn’t have known how badly he wanted to race across the country to get back to her. 

With that thought in mind, he presses his foot a little harder onto the gas pedal and turns the radio back on, looking for any sort of noise to drown out the rest of the world. 

By the time midnight hits, Tim is seeing signs for Nebraska, so he knows he has to be getting close to state line. He’s hoping to get across state line before he stops, trying to get as many miles behind him as he can before he goes to sleep. 

He ends up stopping before Nebraska though, when a hotel sign advertising $64 rooms and hot breakfast catches his eye. It’s bright yellow against the dark sky, and he stares at it just a second too long before he remembers that he’s driving. More than anything, that’s the realization that has him pulling over, wondering if Lucy is going to be working at this front desk too. 

She’s not, and Tim doesn't know what he’s disappointed; he knows it’s not actually Lucy in the middle of the Midwest. Still, something falters in his stomach when he smiles at the elderly woman who helps make his reservation and thanks her for taking a few dollars off his bill when she spots the badge in his wallet. 

Tonight’s accommodations are scores better than the hotel he’d pulled out of not even 18 hours earlier; the carpet is all one color, the bedspread actually looks white, and there are no cracked tiles in the shower. 

He leaves the blanket in the car when he goes for his change of clothes, tucks his gun into the drawer of the bedside table and leaves the safety on. 

After he brushes his teeth and plugs his phone in to charge, he contemplates if he should remove his boots to sleep tonight. But this bed look wholly inoffensive, comfortable even, so he strips all the way to his boxers and settles in between the sheets. 

Before he closes his eyes, Tim rolls over to check his phone. He’d never gotten a call from the LAPD, but there’s an email in his inbox with some paperwork he’ll read more carefully in the morning. He can rest easy now, knowing that his job is waiting for him. It doesn’t look like this will have to be anything more than a long vacation and some holidays he’s sure he’ll be working this year. 

He tries to lock his phone, but his fingers move of their own accord and the next thing he knows, he’s looking at the texts he and Lucy sent earlier in the day. 

There are a million thoughts running through his head, a million things he wants to say to her. She’d still be awake, he’s almost positive. It’s not even midnight in LA yet, he knows she’d see whatever he sends before she falls asleep. 

He considers everything from calling, just to hear her voice today, to texting a simple “goodnight,” but knows that any of it would be a tell. He’s never texted her goodnight before, why would he start now? Lucy would be incredibly suspicious, and whatever plan he comes up with for his return to LA would be ruined before he even had the chance to think of it. 

Instead, he swipes the keyboard down and pulls up the picture she’d sent him earlier. She’s still smiling at him, and he wonders if she looks like that right now. Not the sweaty, athleticwear part, but the genuine happiness written across her face, how bright and cheerful she looks. 

Tim has missed that, missed the way that she’s always upbeat about everything. Even when the world smacks her in the face, she finds a way to smile, a joke to crack. 

There’s nothing he wants more than to be back in LA right now, asking Lucy for a drink after work, hoping he can get her face to light up like that. 

He’s halfway there, almost. Two more days and he can be home. But he’ll never get there if he doesn’t go to sleep, so he closes out of the messages and sets an early morning alarm, then rolls over and tries not to pretend that she and Kojo are on the other side of the bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you on Saturday!


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim clears the Midwest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so time zones are a thing, and so is working until 11 p.m. So it's up before I go to bed on Saturday, and therefore it counts.
> 
> Also, I wanted to make sure this chapter was perfect, because it's probably my favorite part of the entire fic. Seriously, have not shut up about this chapter since I wrote it over a month ago. So, enjoy! 
> 
> xoxo

Tim’s alarm goes off at 7:30, but it feels much earlier, considering how late he’d fallen asleep. Five hours of sleep is enough to function, but not enough to function willingly, especially when he’s not able to rely on his career instincts to get through a shift. 

He dresses and clears the room before going to the lobby for breakfast. This morning’s spread looks edible, decent by hotel standards, so he fills a foam plate with scrambled eggs and chewy bacon. Once he’s got a cup of coffee in his hand, he sits down and stares at local news he doesn’t care about. Someone is running for city council and someone else thinks they should withdraw from the race and Tim couldn't give less of a damn if he tried. 

So he eats his food and drinks his coffee, and when he’s finished, he pours a second cup before he checks out and climbs back into his truck. 

This part feels just like yesterday, the stale coffee burning his tongue as he navigates his way back to the interstate. He hardly notices the sign welcoming him to Nebraska, other than to mentally check another state off the list that stands between him and California. He stops after two hours, cursing the second cup of coffee for the minutes lost. 

The truck is fine on gas, so he buys a packet of trail mix in the convenient store for something to snack on as he watches the signs for his highway change even though he knows it’s not for a couple hundred more miles. He’s eager to find his exit, ready to get one highway closer to everything he’d left behind. 

Somewhere between the small towns, the radio station turns to static, then switches to the sort of classic rock he’d grown used to back in LA. After a couple of songs, it becomes obvious that what passes for a “classic” in Nebraska isn’t the same as Tim’s definition, but even if most of it is a decade or so too new for his tastes, it’s the best station he’s stumbled across so far. He turns the volume up a little bit, happy to listen to something almost-familiar for a couple hundred miles. 

He’s shocked to hear Nickelback, can’t believe that anything released in his lifetime would pass for a “classic,” and finds himself even more surprised to recognize the song, even though he knows that Isabel used to play their albums around the house. 

The lyrics are almost too apt for his situation, in the unsettling way that music can be when it finds him at just the right moment. He listens to the band sing about having “been away for far too long,” and “dreaming you’ll be with me and you’ll never let go.” Part of him wants to turn the radio off or scan for a new station, or do _anything_ other than listen to his life playing across the airwaves, but he can’t bring himself to reach for the dial, mentally cites the clearly marked construction zone as an unsafe place not to have both hands on the wheel. 

As the song fades out, he finds himself wondering if Lucy’s ever listened to it, if she’s heard it since he left and maybe related to it as much as he did just now. He thinks about texting her to ask next time he stops, looking up the link and sending it to her. But that idea falls apart almost as soon as it crosses his mind; if he can’t even bring himself to tell her that he’s coming back to California, how can he tell her that she’s the reason he’s driving so fast to get there? 

So he lets the music turn back into background noise and notices that the trail mix hasn’t held him over as long as he’d hoped. At the next exit, he pulls off the highway and almost immediately finds a local diner with a sign advertising the “best pie in the county, three years running!” 

_Pie seems like as good a lunch as any, and he can still see the interstate, so he can’t get too turned around._

The waitress reminds him of every Midwestern stereotype, an older woman with greying hair pulled into a bun so high on her head that it holds her reading glasses as she approaches the stool he’s chosen at the counter. 

She drops a laminated menu in front of him and offers a minute for him to read it over, but Tim stops her before she can turn away, only just noticing the handwritten nametag pinned to her shirt reading ETHEL. 

“Actually, I’ll do a cup of coffee, a burger with no onions and … extra pickles,” He adds the pickles as an afterthought, smiling as he remembers another time when he had to clarify that on a burger order. “And a slice of whatever your best pie is.” 

He hears her respond, but doesn't process the words over the memories whirling through his head while she walks away and comes back to pour his coffee. It’s an endless reel of moments he and Lucy have shared, from watching her trudge beside the shop on her first day all the way up to their awkward not-quite-goodbye the night before he left. 

Ethel slides a plate of food in front of him and winks. 

“I’ll come back by with your pie when you’re wrapping up, sugar.” 

He swallows a grimace at the nickname, and at the delay in having to wait for his pie. He’s interested in a good meal, but every minute Tim spends here is another minute that he’s not getting closer to LA. But he supposes he wouldn’t actually eat it any faster if it were already in front of him, and as soon as he bites into the fresh and juicy burger, he knows he can add a few minutes to enjoy the food after rushing through every part of the trip leading up to this. 

Besides, Lucy doesn’t know he’s coming back, so it’s not like he’s keeping her waiting. 

The pie is black cherry, served warm in thick slices with ice cream dripping down the sides and the filling making puddles on his plate. It’s not like Tim has any point of comparison, but he’d sure believe that it’s the best in the county. If it isn’t, he’d like to meet the pie that is, see just how they managed to beat this one. Because it’s certainly the best he’s ever had, and he tells Ethel so as he slips a $10 bill underneath his credit card and passes her the check. 

“Well, honey, you come back and see us during blackberry season and you can try the pie that won the county fair three years in a row.” 

“I might just have to do that.” He doesn't have the heart to tell her that he’s probably never coming back across the country again, even if he’s only just met this woman. And as soon as the words are out of his mouth, his mind’s eye builds a picture of Lucy sitting across from him in a booth, sharing a slice of pie. Maybe two, so they could try different flavors. He imagines driving her to the middle of nowhere, Nebraska, telling her all about his trip back home, maybe holding her hand, or letting his fingers rest on her leg, just under the hem of her cutoff denim shorts. 

_When did his daydreams get so wildly specific? And does Lucy even own denim shorts?_

He bids Ethel goodbye and heads back out to the truck with a to-go cup of coffee she’d pushed into his hand when she brought his credit card back. Three turns later, he’s back on I-80 and the signs for his exit are getting closer and closer together. 

Finally, after two full days on the road, he sees the mile marker that tells him he’s just two miles from I-76. Then a mile, half a mile, and he’s on the ramp, trying to figure out why he’s so relieved to still be almost 18 hours from his destination. 

He figures it’s because he’s through the first big landmark that isn’t a state line, and that he can feel the way the road points a little bit south now. It’s pointing closer toward home than he’s been in two months, even if he still has hundreds of miles and six states to go. 

The next thing he knows, he’s seeing the Denver skyline edge over the horizon, mountains casting dark shadows across the sky as he drives into the sunset. 

The colors are brilliant, all reds and oranges behind the dark blue peaks, and Tim finds himself watching the sky more than the road. The traffic is slowed down, but returning to normal as evening rush hour wraps up, and he pays just enough attention not to get in an accident. 

Until his phone beeps at him from the center console, and he’s suddenly thankful to his earlier self for putting the GPS on as he pulled out of the diner. 

There’s only two miles until his exit, but he’s totally positive that he would have missed it if he hadn’t had the reminder. As it is, he barely makes his lane changes in time, and has to wave an apology at a Prius when he cuts it off to merge onto the ramp. 

He’s on I-70 now, just two highways from LA, and the colors are fading from the sky. There’s enough light from the city that he can’t see the stars, but he knows they’re there, and the part of his heart that’s a secret romantic can almost feel their pull, the guide he’s following to get back to where he needs to be. 

Thankfully, his phone breaks him out of the sappy reverie when it announces that he’s got 502 miles until his next planned exit. The stars aren’t guiding him anywhere, just his maps app. 

He makes it a couple more hours down the road before his stomach starts growling again. Short of turning back for Nebraska to get another slice of pie, he’s not sure what he wants to eat, so he starts watching signs. 

Nothing sounds particularly appetizing, everything means straying from his course for at least a few minutes, and he realizes belatedly that he’d forgotten the other half of last night’s sandwich in the hotel room this morning. Which means he’ll have to pull off somewhere, but he’s mentally restricting his options to fast food chains that he knows have drive-thrus. 

Three exits later, he’s pulling around the end of a Taco Bell, trying to decide what he can eat while he drives. It’s an area where he’s got some experience, no stranger to a working lunch while he patrols the streets of LA, so he knows what the safe options are. Bean and cheese burritos aren’t glamourous by any stretch of the word, but they’re filling and relatively easy to eat, so he orders four of them from the version of Lucy working the drive-thru window, and a small drink, so he won’t have to stop again before he turns in for the night. 

Lucy smiles at him as she passes him the paper sack of food, and he has to force himself not to let their fingers brush. 

“Thanks. Have a good one, Boot.” He sits the bag on the seat as he pulls away and reaches in for the first burrito, unwrapping the foil with one hand while he steers. 

_Have a good one, Boot._

He’s barely made it back to the on-ramp when it hits him. _Lucy was at the drive-thru._ She took his order, charged his card and gave him his food, and he didn’t even notice. The food hardly leaves a taste in his mouth as he racks his brain, trying to figure out if he’s missed seeing her anywhere else. 

He hasn’t got any idea why it matters to him so much, why he feels the sudden need to know each and every time Lucy existed as a figment of his imagination. But it’s the only thing on his mind as he fishes the next burrito out. She’s only popped up once since he left New York – well, twice now, – and he’s suddenly desperate to know if he missed her somewhere else. 

By the time he’s done eating, and done taking a fine-toothed comb over everyone he’s seen or spoken to in the last two days to make sure that none of them were Lucy, Tim has made it far enough from Denver that he can see the stars, and he can feel the exhaustion from a long day settling into his bones. He looks down and realizes that he’s almost out of gas, groaning as he starts watching for the next exit. 

It’s a good opportunity to get out of the truck, stretch his back and legs out while the gas pump churns. He does a few jumping jacks to get the blood flowing and stops by the bathroom before he gets back into the truck. 

The break gives him just enough energy to keep pushing toward Utah, just 150 miles away. That’s two hours; he can do this for two more hours. He can spend two more hours inching toward home, thinking about Lucy and all the places he’s driven by that he could take her to visit. 

Mile by mile, he can feel his foot dropping the gas pedal closer to the floor. He has to get to state line tonight. It’s the only way he’ll be home by tomorrow evening, and he’s so, _so_ anxious to be in LA tomorrow. He can do it, knows he can do it. He and Rachel had made it to the far side of Utah the first day they spent driving out, so if he can get to Utah tonight, he can be home tomorrow. 

It’s not that late by the time he gets to state line, just after 11 p.m., but he’s been on the road for almost 14 hours and the only thing that sounds better to him than a bed, is a bed with Lucy in it too. 

_Tomorrow,_ he reminds himself as he checks in at another nondescript chain hotel. It’s not the same brand as last night, but the room has the same cookie-cutter plainness about it, the same sort of chronically inoffensive abstract art on the walls. _Tomorrow he will be back in his hometown, and hopefully back to Lucy._

_To Lucy for the first time?_ He’s not sure how to define it, but he knows that he’s too tired to go down that rabbit hole tonight. 

Instead, he indulges in a shower so long that the water turns tepid. It’s the best water pressure he’s had since he left LA, none of the garden-hose trickle Rachel kept convincing him that he’d get used to. He towels off and pulls on the T-shirt and boxers he’d brought in from the truck, leaving his jeans draped over the desk chair for the morning. 

It’s nearing midnight, but Tim’s body is still an hour ahead, stuck in the time zone where he’d woken up. He’s exhausted, eager to be back on the road as soon as he can come morning. So he fills a paper cup with water and lays down between the sheets, clicking the TV on and flipping channels until he finds a sitcom running syndicated reruns. It’s an episode he’s seen countless times before, and just the kind of background noise he’s looking for while he lets his mind run over the path he’ll take in the morning. 

He’s trying to picture the streets of LA when his eyes slide closed, focusing clearly on the buildings and landmarks he’s been driving past for more than two decades. It’s an easy picture to draw, his eye for detail making even the must nuanced features clear. 

Tim feels the sleep creeping up on him, distantly thinks that he should turn the TV off, but can’t be bothered to expend the energy to do so. 

If he can drift off in a fully-lit room, he’ll be able to sleep in this one just fine. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be back on Tuesday, hopefully while it's still Tuesday! Meantime, let me know what you think down below!


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim starts driving south, and thinks about how close he is to being back to Lucy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, before midnight this time! Those who know how I write will be thrilled to know that the Vegas line was scrawled hastily in the margins of the original outline and stayed virtually unedited at every step of the way. 
> 
> Enjoy!

His eyes open slowly, slide closed again, then fly open as he sits upright and realizes that the sun is streaming in from the gap between the curtains. 

Tim reaches for his phone, tapping the home button to check the time. He throws the covers back and stands abruptly when he realizes that it’s after 11; he missed breakfast and hours of valuable driving time. 

It doesn’t take long to pull his pants over his legs and brush his teeth. He runs the coffee pot in the room while he dresses, draining the last of the water from the bedside table and pouring the freshly brewed coffee into the same cup. The first sip burns his tongue; it’s the hottest coffee he’s had in three days, but he can’t bring himself to care when he can feel his body waking up the rest of the way, his mind clearing enough that he’ll be able to get back on the road. 

He pours a second cup and rinses the carafe in the bathroom sink, then hangs his laundry bag from his wrist and balances the coffee on top of his shoebox and heads for the elevator. 

The manager is standing at the front desk, and she smiles broadly while she prints his receipt. Tim smiles back, but he can tell that it doesn’t reach his eyes. He had been hoping she’d be Lucy, always wants to see Lucy, wherever he is. 

When he gets out to the truck, he fastens his seatbelt and starts the engine but doesn’t reach for the gearshift. Instead, he stares out the windshield, knows he’s parked facing California, longs to see it in front of him, even though he knows he’s 800 miles away. 

He’s not sure how long he sits watching the horizon, but he’s frustrated with himself when he shakes off the stupor and backs out of the parking lot, looking at the clock on the dash. 

As if he hadn’t already gotten a late start today, he just wasted 20 minutes that he could have been driving. It’s noon and he’s just now getting back on the highway? He could have already had a few hours behind him, and he’s still got 12 to go, if he doesn't stop at all. 

At this rate, he may never make it back to Los Angeles. And just the thought of that is enough for his foot to grow just a little heavier, his speed to get just a little faster as he slips into the left lane and pushes himself to focus on driving, not on the time he’s lost. 

Before long, though, his mind starts wandering again and he’s thinking about how he’ll tell Lucy that he’s back in LA. He could meet her outside the station after a shift, but what if someone else sees him first and tips her off, or if he gets into town after she’d be off work, which is looking increasingly likely. 

He’s not sure why it matters to him, but he wants to surprise her, wants to see the look on her face when she finds out he came back. Briefly, he considers calling Angela and asking her to help him get everyone at the bar after a shift, making a quiet entrance and waiting for everyone to notice that he’s sitting at the table with them. 

That doesn’t feel right either though; it’s too public and there are too many variables he can’t control. Besides, he’s known since the first time she tried to get him a birthday present that Angela can’t keep a secret to save her life. Not if it’s something she’s excited about. 

Three hours later, he’s almost decided on a plan. He’s thinking that he’ll wait in the parking lot of the coffee shop where he knows Lucy stops almost every morning. She’s mentioned in a few messages that she’s starting taking Kojo on the way back from their morning walk, so he’ll wait for them to go inside and “bump into her” when they’re coming back out. 

It’s not a perfect plan, but he can’t think of any other way that he’d be virtually guaranteed a one-on-one reunion. Maybe he’ll call Angela after, see about setting up drinks with everyone in the evening. 

But he wants his moment with Lucy first. As much as she’s been on his mind the last few days, she deserves to hear what he has to say without risking interruption from well-meaning … life-experienced … rookies who think that just because he lets Angela hug him occasionally, Tim would welcome that sort of contact from just anyone. 

Or almost anybody else they both know. But especially Nolan, if he tries to hug him again. 

Tim pulls his focus back to the road when his phone reminds him that the next highway change is in just a few miles, and realizes in the same moment that it’s almost three in the afternoon and he still hasn’t eaten anything. 

He sighs, and steers along the ramp that turns him southbound, merging onto I-15. Once he’s headed the right direction, he starts watching signs until he sees a turnoff for a rest stop. Parking is easy to find, since he’s not driving a semi truck, and there’s a handful of food options he can choose between while he walks around to get the blood flowing back into his legs. 

After he stops at the bathroom, Tim settles on a chicken sandwich and lets himself sit down at a table long enough to eat. The legs are uneven, so his chair wobbles every time he shifts his weight. He thinks about moving, but if he stays here, leans into the discomfort, he figures he’ll be that much more ready to get back in the truck as soon as he polishes off his fries. 

Sure enough, the moment his tray is empty, Tim is standing up again and throwing his trash away, refilling his drink so he’ll have something to sip on as he drives into the home stretch of his trip. 

The next two hours pass in a blur of sandy desert, the seemingly endless stretches of reddish ground occasionally punctuated with a bit of brush or a visible rock formation. He pays enough attention to keep the truck on the road, but there’s nothing engaging enough to keep him truly focused on his surroundings. 

Which means that Tim spends a lot of his afternoon thinking about what he wants to say to Lucy when he see her. He considers a couple dozen options, everything from a long rom-com style soliloquy where he lists off every moment he realized he was falling in love to his own recreation of the sailor at the end of WWII, bending Lucy backwards and letting a kiss say all the words he’s thinking. 

The former is too cliché, the latter too forward in all the wrong ways. He’s taking a risk with this, he knows, but that doesn’t mean he’s looking for the kind of risk that’s bordering on legal action. 

This time, his line of thought stays focused and he’s ready for the sign letting him know that he’s crossed into Arizona. It’s barely a technicality, the way he’s going to spend half an hour in the northwestern corner of the state before he reaches Nevada. 

Still, almost as soon as he’s over state line, he’s watching road signs closely and cursing under his breath at his past self for refilling his drink at lunch. It’s not going to take long for him to stop and pee, but he’s distracted from his earlier focus, too busy looking for a rest stop to think about his reunion with Lucy. 

He finds a sign pointing to a set of ramshackle bathrooms just off the highway. It’s a short frontage road, almost more of a driveway than a street, and a handful of parking places. 

The fixtures inside are all brushed steel, almost identical to the toilets Tim has seen the times he’s been inside of prison facilities. They're utilitarian in an off-putting way, how the stall doors stop close to three feet above the ground and the panels dividing the urinals are a couple of inches more narrow than they should be. It gets the job done, though, and Tim rinses his fingers off in the sink, pumping at an empty soap dispenser until he gives up and turns around to turn on the hand dryer. 

Not only is there no hand dryer, there’s not even a paper towel dispenser. Just a fabric towel, stitched into a loop around a plastic dispenser. The raggedy material doesn’t look like it’s been washed since Tim was still in the military, and some of the edges look like they’d be crunchy if he touched them. 

He doesn’t touch it; getting hepatitis isn’t part of his plan today, and he’d rather drag his hands up and down the thighs of his jeans a few times than risk contracting anything from the communal rest stop towel. Even if the dispenser does proudly declare that it’s “eco-friendly” and “self-sanitizing.” 

He’s back in the truck and on the road in record time, dying to leave the rest stop before he has to touch anything else. Just a few minutes after he’s merged back into traffic, he’s driving past the sign for the Nevada state line. 

Nevada. The last state before California. He has to get all the way across it, but Tim can feel in his bones how close he’s getting. 

The scenery is no different than the deserts in Utah, and his mind drifts again. 

Maybe he could play it off like he missed Kojo, let her read the subtext to figure out that he’s not talking about the dog. 

But if she doesn’t get the hint, what then? How would he explain himself? 

No, that’s not it at all. 

He could ask her out for coffee, write something on the side of her cup before he hands it over. 

Way too Hallmark, Bradford. 

The best option is probably to be straightforward, tell her how he feels and ask outright if she would be interested in a date sometime. 

It’s not glamourous, but neither is he, and Lucy knows that. 

He still needs to figure out what, exactly, he wants to say, but the sun is starting to set and he can see the neon lights of Las Vegas brightening the horizon. 

If he’s made it to sunset, he probably needs to stop and eat again, and a glance at the dashboard tells him that he _definitely_ needs to find a gas pump. 

There’s a station right before he gets to the Strip, and it’s even got a fried chicken chain in the same parking lot. He pulls into a stall and swipes his card, starting the pump before he runs inside, figuring that he should use the bathroom now, while he’s stopped anyway. When he comes back out, the nozzle has stopped flowing, so he sets it back in place and pulls around the side of the building to order at the drive-thru. 

Just like this morning at the hotel, he’s hoping to see Lucy at the window, but instead it’s a stocky teenaged boy, sporting bright green braces and so much hair gel that Tim can only assume his spiky style could withstand a tornado without moving. 

As soon as he realizes it’s not Lucy, he loses interest in everything except the cardboard box of half-cold chicken fingers he’s balancing in his lap and the iced tea dripping condensation into the cupholder. 

“Have a great day, and thanks for choosing Chicken Chad’s.” His voice cracks halfway through the recited platitude and Tim mutters something generic in reply as he pulls away. 

If Lucy isn’t here, he just wants to get to where she is, and he can’t do that if he lingers at a gas station on the outskirts of Vegas. So it’s back to the highway, where he starts seeing more billboards than he can count for the “cheapest slots” or the “highest jackpots” on the Strip. 

Tim thinks it must be impossible for four different casinos to all have the highest jackpots. But he also figures that no one would go to a casino advertising record low payouts. He’s just glad that he’s smart enough not to throw his money down the drain just to pull a handle and watch some dials spin. 

He’s not usually one for casinos, but he’s played in a handful of poker nights, and usually left with more money that he had at the start. Poker is a game of skill, though. Sure, there’s luck in the cards he draws, but the important part is watching the other players, reading their tells to know who’s got a good hand and who’s bluffing. And he’s always been good at reading people. 

Luck rarely plays in his favor, but even so, his eyes linger on a billboard announcing brand new roulette tables at a casino he’s never heard of. If he has to pick a game of chance, roulette has always been a good option because there’s thinking and odds involved as well. He thinks about stopping, considers placing a bet on 28. It’s a black number, he knows, like the uniforms they wear, and the first two digits on Lucy’s badge. Or maybe 19, their regular patrol district and the same shade of red as her cheeks had flushed when he tossed her ring back to her after everything that had happened with Caleb. 

It would be an easy stop, two exits ahead, and apparently right off the highway. He’s sure it’s one of the sets of neon lights that are almost painfully bright beside the interstate. 20 minutes, tops: in, bet, win or lose, and leave. 

But he makes himself keep driving, refuses to change lanes until he’s past the exit. Because he could stop, could throw a little money away and call it a sign that he’s on the right path. But he doesn’t need a sign, other than the way his heart pounds every time Lucy appears in front of him somewhere he knows she’s not. 

Besides, he’s gambling enough just by driving back across the country without telling anyone what he’s doing. Or who he’s doing it for. 

He passes the exit, stays the course for another 45 minutes. The miles fly by, between his own exhaustion and the way he keeps thinking about Lucy. A quick glance at the dashboard tells him it’s almost 10 p.m., and he pictures her getting ready for bed, taking Kojo out for a lap of the block, patting his head after she’s brushed her teeth. She probably lets him sleep in bed with her, despite Tim’s failed yet valiant effort to keep him off of the furniture. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See y'all Tuesday!


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim makes it all the way to Lucy's front door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! We're in the home stretch now, AND I remember that it is Saturday!
> 
> Also, as I wrote this chapter, I just kept picturing the SNL Californians sketches, so feel free to keep that in mind as you read it lol

As he crosses over the California state line, he decides that there are worse things in the world than fur on the bedspread, especially if it makes Lucy smile. 

His eyes are growing heavy, though, and he considers stopping for the night. At this rate, it’ll be 2 in the morning before he gets back to Los Angeles, but if he finds a hotel room, he can be home by lunchtime tomorrow. He can recite the statistics about tired driving, how it’s just as dangerous as driving drunk, can describe numerous accident scenes he’s worked after someone fell asleep at the wheel. 

Stopping somewhere would be the safe option, he knows. And he promises himself that he will pick a hotel if the exhaustion gets any worse. But first, he pulls into a gas station and pours himself the largest foam cup of coffee on offer. As an afterthought, he adds a couple pumps of vanilla creamer before he pays. 

Back in the truck, every sip reminds him of one of the last late nights he and Lucy worked together before she finished field training, when Nolan had gone on the coffee run and he’d teased her about drinking fancy lattes on a stakeout. 

The cup is empty sooner than he’d like, but he can feel himself perking back up a bit. If he can just keep going like this, he can make it home tonight. It’ll be early morning when he gets there, but every minute back in LA will be a minute better than if he’d spent it anywhere else. 

He’s watching the road, hardly any traffic on the desert-style outskirts of California at 11 p.m., when he glances over to the dashboard and realizes that it’s a new day and he needs to find a gas station before too long. A quick moment of personal awareness, and he realizes that he needs to find a gas station _soon_ and probably stop buying the biggest drink he can find. 

A few minutes later, he’s in the parking lot of some locally-owned hole in the wall. The tank is filling up, and he pushes the bathroom door open with the toe of his shoe. Based on the rest of the property alone, he was correct in his assumption that he’d want to touch as few surfaces as he could, so he takes care of business, flicking his hands under the motion-sensor sink, but bypassing the hand-pumped soap dispenser and uses just two fingers to pull the door back open and return to the truck. 

In the interest of not touching the gas station, he’d had to forgo another cup of coffee, so he finds himself sitting in a McDonald’s drive-thru, staring at the highway while he waits for the car in front of him to settle on a small army’s worth of cheeseburgers. He taps his left foot against the floorboard, waiting for the line to crawl forward so he can order a “large coffee, black, no room for cream,” and hand over his debit card at the first window. 

The voice in the speaker is nothing like Lucy’s, but he still holds out hope that she might be standing at the window when he pulls forward. When he sees that it isn’t her, he’s momentarily crestfallen until he remembers that he’s in the home stretch now, not even half a shift’s time away from her front door. 

He almost pulls away without his card, and barely remembers to stop at the second window. Suddenly, he’s regretting the decision to stop for coffee again, to have to see two more people who aren’t Lucy, to add even 10 more minutes behind the wheel. 

The first sip of coffee is hardly above room temperature, and it doesn’t get more palatable as he keeps drinking. He forges on, though, remembering that it’s keeping him alert enough to keep driving. The cities on the highway signs are starting to become familiar again: 100 miles to Barstow, 160 to San Bernardino if he takes I-215. 

But the first sign marked for Los Angeles catches him off guard. It’s still close to 200 miles away, but he has a number now, not just a vague guide that I-15 will get him back to LA eventually. The closer he gets, the more real it becomes, the idea that he’s coming back to LA, back to Lucy, concreting itself in his mind where before it had been an abstract goal, something far off in the distance. He watches the numbers creep down until he has to stop again, just 30 miles from county line, for another bathroom break. 

This time, he’s close enough to home that the chain is familiar, and he never thought he’d be so relieved to see a neon Chevon sign lighting up the sky. The coffee is decent; still low-budget gas station brand, but it tastes like the hundreds of times he’d stopped at a store virtually identical to this one on shift. Every location is a little bit different, but similar enough that it feels like he’s been here before, walked across the colorful checkerboard tiles on the floor, carried a red and white paper cup out to his truck on autopilot. 

Tim is used to it being early in the morning when he does this, not late at night, but the routine is the same: fill the cup, find the lid, smile at the clerk, “have a good day,” don’t spill the drink as he climbs into the seat, lean back and take a sip. 

He sighs as the caffeine hits his veins again; every cup has been a little less effective than the last at keeping him awake, and his floorboard is a veritable scrapbook of convenience store and hotel coffee cups that chronicle his trip. Usually, his truck is neat, but he knows he’ll be unpacking everything again soon anyway; what’s a couple of extra coffee cups? 

The exit for I-10 sneaks up on him, but there’s little enough traffic at 1 in the morning that he doesn't have a problem drifting across three lanes of traffic to make it to the ramp. He knows where he is now, knows that he’s only got an hour or so left until he makes it to where he’s going. 

As he gets close enough to the city that he recognizes every exit, Tim feels an unexpected sense of dread wash over him. He’s only five minutes from Los Angeles county, maybe half an hour from Lucy’s apartment, and suddenly he realizes what he’s doing. He’s chased her all the way across the country, without ever having told her that he’s coming back. There’s a million and one ways it could go wrong, from him knocking on the wrong door to Lucy not being interested in having him back in her life, and everything in between. 

That’s the worst thing he can imagine: Lucy not wanting anything to do with him. Even if she doesn't want a relationship, he can make his peace with just being around her, soaking up the positivity she radiates at every turn. 

He takes a deep breath as he sees downtown Los Angeles lighting up the sky in front of him. It’s an unmistakable landmark, an almost unearthly glow coming over the horizon. As he steadies himself, Tim tries to think of it as a sort of beacon, something he can set his sites on and drive toward. 

Traffic picks up downtown, slows him down just enough to be frustrating. He knows every street in the city, thinks about getting off the highway and picking his way across residential roads until he gets to Lucy’s. But he knows that the downtown traffic is impossibly worse off of the highway than on it, and the last thing he needs is to get in an accident and be delayed again when he’s this close to his destination. 

So he stays on the interstate, loops around to the 101 and follows it until the heart of the city is just a faint glow in his rearview mirror. It’s not a beacon anymore, he doesn’t need one now that he’s back to his old stomping grounds. He feels it in his bones the moment he crosses into the Mid-Wilshire jurisdiction, an easy familiarity to the curves and turns. 

He stops at one last gas station, right at the bottom of the exit ramp that will carry him toward Lucy’s. No coffee this time, but he’d hate to ruin the reunion he’s planned by asking to use her bathroom. There's a rack of bouquets on the wall, and he stares at them for a second, considering himself turning up on Lucy’s doorstep with a handful of flowers. 

That feels almost like an apology, though, like he’s trying to win back her good graces after leaving for New York. And he’s not sorry at all, not if it took going to New York to realize how badly he needed Lucy in his life. 

Besides, all at once, it occurs to him that it’s after 2:30 in the morning, and Lucy probably wouldn’t appreciate his return if she had to wake up at this hour of the night to see him. So he walks past the flowers, waves at the cashier, gets back into his truck and drives home. 

It’s easy, the same set of turns he’d made almost every day for 12 years not forgotten in just two months away. Then it’s 2:45 a.m. and Tim is parked in front of his driveway, in front of a house he still owns but doesn’t live in. It’s his house, but not his home, and he’s realizing that he doesn’t know where else to go. 

He can’t sit out here forever, though, so he puts the truck back in gear and drives around the area, circling past all of his regular spots. He doesn’t have a particular destination in mind, so he drives by the division, down the block to the food truck where he’s eaten more lunches than he can count, over to the bar where he and Angela would drink after long shifts. 

Everything is exactly where he left it, like the city has been waiting for him to get back. 

After he exhausts himself of businesses to drive by, he sets his course on Angela’s house. She’s always been a night owl; maybe she’ll still be awake to greet him. 

But when he gets there, all the windows are dark and Wesley’s car is parked out front. 

_Right, they’re engaged now. Of course he’s there. And they’re asleep, like people should be at_ _almost_ _3 a.m._

So that’s not a doorbell he can ring. 

With nowhere else he can think of to go, Tim turns around at the end of the block and heads for Lucy’s. He knows she’ll probably be asleep, hopes a new idea will hit him on the way there. It’s a short drive, and he’s parked in front of her building not 15 minutes later. 

His legs carry him to her apartment before he realizes what’s happening, but he’s at least able to stop himself from pounding on the door and waking the whole building. His hand is raised, fingers curled into a fist, but he recoils at the last second before he makes contact with the hollow wood. 

Tim leans forward, gently dropping his head against the door. 

_He’s here, exactly where he’s been trying to get for the last three days, and there’s not a damn thing he can do for at least four or five more hours_. 

But now that he’s made it this far, he knows he isn’t going to be able to get himself to leave. It’s not like he knows what he’d say to her, even if he did knock, so there’s really no point in it. Not now, at 3 in the morning, when he knows she’s fast asleep. 

So Tim does the only thing he knows how to do. He turns around, slides down until he’s sitting on the porch with his back against the front door and his legs stretched straight out in front of him. He’s waited this long, surely he can wait a few more hours. 

The door behind him offers a sense of security. It’s something stable to lean against, he knows who could be on the other side, and he can see anyone approaching him. His Glock digs into his hip, so he slides it out of his waistband and under his thigh. It's still in easy reach if he needs it, his thumb brushing the top of the barrel where his hand rests at his side. 

Finally, the late night catches up with him, and his eyelids start sliding closed. He’s not planning to stay awake all night; it’s not a night shift, he can take a little cat nap. No shorter than 20 minutes, no longer than 40. 

_Just like he taught Lucy on their first night shift._

So he lets himself close his eyes and start trying to work through what he’ll say to Lucy when he finally knocks on her door in the morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Until Tuesday, darlings!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy and Kojo wake up to an intruder sitting outside the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daisy let me lose track of the days again, but I guess we still mostly love her. (Kidding, she's the greatest). Enjoy the penultimate chapter!

Lucy stirs when a cold, wet nose pushes against her collarbone. She rolls over, pulling the blankets with her, and groans when Kojo keeps prodding at her and whimpering. 

“Kojo, no,” she whines, trying to nudge him away without having to pull any limbs out from under the covers. “Go back to sleep. It’s too early for walkies.” 

He doesn’t lay back down, but when he jumps off the bed and she can hear his nails against the floor in the living room, Lucy figures she’ll be able to go back to sleep. 

Until Kojo jumps back onto the bed and kneads her thighs and backside with his paws. 

“Get off, stop it.” She flips to her back, disturbing him enough that he hops down and goes back to the door. 

She’s almost back to her dream – some sort of vague road trip with her friends from work; the group still includes Tim, even though it’s been two months since she’s seen him – when Kojo starts scratching at the door. 

“Kojo, here boy. C’mon, let’s sleep a little more, then we can stop for coffee on your walk.” Lucy flings an arm out to smack at the bedding, inviting him to curl up with her again. 

She sleeps better with Kojo’s warm weight pressed against her legs, his quiet snuffles as a sort of dog-owner white noise. 

But Kojo ignores her, whining loudly as he paws the front door. She can hear him dancing his paws against the floor, clearly not about to give up on getting her attention. 

_An overnight walk is going to be better than cleaning up the floors in the morning._

Lucy sighs and sits up, letting the covers fall down to her lap. She rolls her shoulders, shaking off the last bits of sleep, and reaches for her phone. 

It’s 3:45 in the morning. 

She rolls her eyes at the screen, the bright glow of the numbers looking much more alert than Lucy feels at this hour, tucks the offending device into the pocket of her hoodie as she tugs her arms through the sleeves. 

The fabric is cozy, broken in with years of frequent wearing, and she wraps the open front around herself, covering the lightweight tank top and fuzzy shorts that she’d chosen for pajamas. 

Mentally, she converts the time zones between LA and New York. If it’s her 4 a.m., that means it’s 7 where Tim is. 

That’s not too early for her to text him. So she pulls her phone out again, types up a quick message and slips it back away. 

_Your dog seems to think that 4 a.m. is an appropriate time for a potty break. Thought you had him trained?_

Her mind drifts to her duty weapon, locked in the top drawer of her desk. It would be easy to reach for it, slide it into the other pocket of her jacket and keep Kojo’s leash in her left hand. But she’s hoping they won’t even be out further than the little patch of grass at the end of her building, and the complex is brightly lit. It feels a little bit like an overreaction, taking a department-issue weapon to let her dog hike his leg. So she leaves it where it is and yawns as she turns for the door. 

She stumbles at the doorway, steadies herself between the knob and the open frame, and meets Kojo at the front door. 

“OK, fine, you win. Short walk, alright? Pee fast, and we’ll go back to sleep.” She kneels down to clip the leash to his collar and scratches behind his ear as she stands up to stick her feet into the cheap rubber flip flops beside the door. As shoes go, they’re among the least comfortable she’s ever owned – including the five-inch heels she’d tried to wear for senior prom in high school – but they’re cheap and easy to put on and off to take Kojo outside. And she can deal with a couple of blisters to avoid having to lace up sneakers every time the dog has to pee. 

Kojo is all but quivering with excitement when she unlocks the door and turns the handle. He steps back as she pulls it open, and Lucy is expecting him to try and bolt down the stairs like he usually does, so she’s got her weight braced against the door. 

Which means that she has to jump backward to avoid the person who falls through the doorway. 

She barely manages to hold onto Kojo’s leash in her panic, scrambling to reach for her hip. When she remembers that she’s not wearing a holster, on account of the pajamas, she crams her hand frantically into her jacket pocket and … 

Comes up empty. 

There’s an intruder lying in her entryway, Jackson isn’t home and her gun is all the way in her bedroom. She’s starting to panic, trying to count how many seconds she would need to get to the desk, get her gun and come back; figuring out how long the man would need to get up and corner her. Because if she’s in her room when he gets there, she doesn’t have a way out. The window doesn’t open, not far enough to fit through, and the drop would almost certainly incapacitate her. There’s no way she could fight back with two broken legs, but maybe she could get to the kitchen. There’s pots and pans there, and she’s seen Tangled. She could pull that off, climb over the counter if she needed an escape route. 

Kojo can probably hold the guy off at least long enough for her to get the big metal stockpot; that would be a pretty good– 

Why hasn’t Kojo started barking? He’s a great defender; Lucy knows firsthand how much of a threat the FedEx driver apparently poses to the home, and he’s never even tried to come in the house. But now there’s a man _lying on the floor in her foyer_ and Kojo … seems delighted. 

She looks over at him, a wiggly, whiny mess, squirming and bouncing on the intruder while he attacks his face with slobbery puppy kisses. Whoever this person is, he’s laughing as he sits up, shifting Kojo to jump on his legs. 

The laughter sounds almost familiar, in a way Lucy can’t quite place, until she notices how he keeps calling the dog by his name. 

_Why would a random intruder know Kojo’s name?_

There’s also something about the _way_ he’s saying it, like he’s trying to be stern, but misses the mark just a little bit with how amusing he finds the enthusiastic greeting. 

She’d know that voice anywhere. 

“Tim?” As soon as Lucy says his name, he looks up and grins at her. 

It’s definitely him. He’s here, in her foyer, playing with her dog. His dog? Either way, he’s here, and he’s supposed to be in New York. Her apartment is about as far from New York as it gets, and he’s supposed to be in New York. 

Tim opens his mouth to say something, but before any words come out, Kojo rears back and jumps onto his chest, tipping him over again. The air rushes out of his lungs in a loud “oof” as he hits the ground, and it’s only then that Lucy realizes that they’re still in her foyer and the front door is hanging open. 

She’s still holding Kojo’s leash, so she pulls on it, dragging him off of Tim and holding him back while he sits up. 

“Kojo, that’s not how we treat people we know, is it?” When she addresses him, her voice goes high-pitched and silly, like she’s talking to a baby. She’d be embarrassed about it under any other circumstances, but Tim knows exactly how spoiled Kojo is, how well he’s got Lucy wrapped around his paw. “Well, are you just going to sit in the floor? There’s a perfectly good couch.” She rolls her eyes when she sees Tim hasn’t moved from his spot in the entryway. 

The comment is enough to get him hauling himself to his feet, and she unclips Kojo’s leash after she closes and relocks the door. As soon as Kojo’s unrestrained, he bounds across the apartment and resumes his energetic wiggling and whining while he pushes his nose against Tim’s hand. 

He seems to get the message, reaching both hands up to scratch behind his ears as Lucy sits down on the other end of the sofa. 

“Six weeks and you undo everything he knows?” Tim glares at her, then winces when he hears the words fill the space between them. 

“What are you doing here?” Lucy looks him up and down, getting her first good look at her former training officer in two months. There’s thick stubble growing on his chin, like he hasn’t shaved in a few days. The bags under his eyes are almost as big as her wallet, and the bright blue T-shirt he’s wearing is more wrinkles than it is fabric. He looks like he’s been put through the wringer, and Lucy has no idea why. 

That strikes her as odd, especially considering that she’s heard from Tim since it looks like he showered last and he hadn’t mentioned anything about coming back to LA. She’s got a dozen questions for him, but figures it’s best to start with the simplest one, only narrowing it down when he doesn’t respond. 

“I mean … aren’t you in New York? I mean, obviously you’re not in New York, but … shouldn’t you be?” 

Tim isn’t looking at her, keeps his eyes focused on Kojo. But after a year of sharing a shop with him, a year of knowing that he’s always, _always_ , watching her back, she can feel his gaze anyway. 

* * *

Tim isn’t watching Lucy. He’s very carefully not watching her as she walks across the room, not flicking his eyes over when she sits down on the far corner of the couch, not looking at the way the sweatshirt she’s wearing slid down one shoulder when she leaned forward. 

He keeps his gaze trained on Kojo, who’s still wiggling in front of him, twisting his body in frenetic circles while Tim runs his hands over his fur. 

But then Lucy asks him what he’s doing here, and he knows he should look at her. She’s probably expecting him to look at her, definitely expecting him to answer her question. 

Except that he doesn’t have an answer. He’s here because this is the only place he knew he wanted to go. The city, her block, her living room, all of it. It’s the only thing he knew he wanted, but he doesn’t have a clue what he’s going to do now that he’s here. 

So he doesn’t say anything. He just keeps petting Kojo, focusing on how happy at least one of them is to have him back. 

_That’s not fair to Lucy,_ he thinks. She doesn’t seem unhappy that he’s here. Just confused, and he knows he brought that on himself when he drove three days across America and intentionally didn’t tell her he wasn’t in New York. He hadn’t lied to her, would never lie to her, but she hadn’t asked, and he didn’t volunteer the information. 

Then her mouth moves again, her voice quietly asking him again why he isn’t in New York anymore. 

Her voice. It sounds just like he remembered, exactly like he imagined it every time he saw her somewhere along the way. 

Tim still doesn’t have an answer to her question. Not a good one, anyway. But she’s saying his name, and it sounds like a whole new set of questions all at once. 

Maybe he doesn’t have the answers to any of them. But he knows what he wants to say. He’s still rubbing Kojo’s ears, but the dog is settling down from the nonstop stomping to a persistent excited tremble. So Tim props his elbows on his knees and turns his head to face Lucy. 

“You’re _everywhere,_ you know that, Boot?”

“What?” She squints at him, and it’s the first expression he’s really seen on her face since he hugged her that night she took Kojo back. He takes the opportunity to study her features. She looks good, and not just in the way that she always looks good. She’s radiant, smooth and gentle. This is definitely off-duty Lucy, the way her eyes aren’t constantly flicking back and forth looking for anything out of sorts. But she’s not that different here from the Lucy he sat next to in the shop; she’s still analytical and compassionate and a little bit fragile in the way that reminds him of a firecracker. Nothing can break her, but if the world isn’t careful, there’s no telling what she’d be capable of. 

But she’s blinking back at him now, and he has to say something, and there’s too much for him to unpack in that set of thoughts, at least for right now. 

So he goes with the straightforward answer. 

“Rachel broke up with me.” Her eyes go wide, and he knows she’s waiting for him to elaborate. “I hated New York and she knew it, so she broke up with me and said I should come back here, where I belong. She was right,” He tilts his head to the side in a semblance of a nod. “I hated it there. What she didn’t know was _why_ I hated it.” 

“You mean it wasn’t the people?” Lucy smiles at him, a real smile, from the real Lucy, and it’s the best thing he’s seen in almost longer than he can remember. She’s here, in front of him, smiling and laughing, and her energy is infectious. 

“No, that too.” He grins back at her, and it’s the easiest thing he’s done today as he starts counting off a list on his fingers. “And no one drives there. You just take the damn train, and the whole city’s a mess. People are rude, and they’re _everywhere._ I spent a month driving a Matchbox car on the sidewalks; you have any idea how hard it is to be badass in a Matchbox car?” Lucy smiles again and shakes her head, and Tim turns his tone serious. “But I could have dealt with all of that. What I couldn’t deal with was seeing you everywhere I looked.” 

“What?” She asks it again, the same vague, open-ended question that he still doesn’t know how to answer. 

Maybe he’ll tell her someday, tell her all the places he ran into her, how she followed him to New York and all the way back here. But that’s too abstract for right now, when he’s finally sitting with her again, finally in a place to tell her how he feels. 

“I couldn’t be there when everything I needed was here.” He takes a deep breath and runs his hands down his thighs. “When _you_ were here.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One moreeeeeee!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Lucy finish their conversation. And start something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! I can't believe it's over, but all I can't wait for y'all to read this last chapter.

“Tim?” She breathes out his name, looks at him with a hundred different questions written across her face. 

“Lucy,” He shifts to face her completely, leaving one hand to scratch Kojo’s head and one foot on the floor. “I’m going to be completely honest with you here, OK?” She nods, and he continues. “I _hated_ New York for so many reasons. But the worst part about it was knowing that you were all the way back here. Everyone else, too, but mostly you. I don’t know when it started, but I know when I realized how much I missed having you around. How much I wanted you to be there, everywhere I turned. But however hard I looked, it was never really you.” 

She turns toward Tim, and something in her expression urges him to keep talking. 

“I tried to move on; I tried to leave you here in LA, have something with Rachel. But I couldn’t do it, Lucy. I couldn’t ignore how much I missed you. I tried to tell myself it was for the best, that I’d left you for a good reason, but none of that mattered. Not when the best part of my week was you calling Rachel and interrupting our Friday night dates. 

“I left, and-and I know that. I don’t know what would have happened if I had stayed here. Between … between us. But I do know that I was standing in an Indian restaurant when I realized how badly I wanted you to be there. And everywhere else I was. I never … I never said a _word_ about it, to anyone. Not even Rachel. But she broke up with me anyway, four days ago, said I should be somewhere that I was happy. I thought that would be with her, but it wasn’t. 

“We packed my things and I left New York that night. Never looked behind me. There’s not enough time in life to look backwards. And there wasn’t anything there for me to look back at; as soon as she said it, I knew she was right. We were never going to work out. Not when she was so excited about her new job, her new life, and all I wanted was to be back here. With you.” 

He looks at Lucy more closely as he finishes his speech, and he could be mistaken but he thinks there are tears shining in her eyes. She bites her lip and he tries not to think about the way it makes his heart skip a beat as she scooches toward him slowly. There’s still distance between them, but less than there was before, and much less than there was four days ago. 

When Lucy stops moving, Tim reaches tentatively forward with the hand that hasn’t stopped petting Kojo since he sat down. Before he can touch her, though, he hesitates and finishes the last thought in his head. 

“So … here I am.” 

Lucy slides her hand into his, squeezes his fingers gently. 

“Here you are.” 

A comfortable silence falls between them, and Tim thinks that this is maybe everything he’s ever wanted. He’s got Lucy, an incredible, strong woman who’s had his attention pretty much since the day he met her, even if he didn’t know it. And _they_ have Kojo, the dog who’s saved them both in more ways than one. He doesn’t want to get ahead of himself, but it feels like maybe he’s got a family here, or at least the start of one. 

But right now, Lucy is looking at him expectantly, and her hoodie is still slid halfway down her arm and he can’t think of anything he wants more than to know how her skin feels under his fingertips. She looks like she’s waiting for him to say something, even though he feels like he’s out of words to say. 

Still, he finds a few more, just for her. 

“Listen, Lucy. You know what kind of guy I am, right?” She opens her mouth, like she’s going to argue, try to tell him he’s a good man. He’s heard it before, from her, and from others. But that’s not what he means, not right now, so he plows on. “Show, not tell?” 

He waits for her to nod before he leans in slowly, purposefully. There’s no mistaking the action, no surprise. But he doesn’t want to surprise her, not with this. He’s surprised her plenty today already, and he doesn’t want to do anything that would move too fast, push her too far, too soon. 

So he moves slowly, makes sure she can see it coming, and she meets him halfway, closing the space between them to lean into a light kiss. Their lips brush together once, twice, before Tim turns his head just enough to press his mouth against hers more firmly as his hand slides from her fingers up to her bare shoulder. 

Her skin is smooth, impossibly soft under his touch, so warm that he can feel it burning into his palm. He rubs his hand in a gentle circle then squeezes lightly as he leans back. 

When his eyes open, the first thing he notices is the blush that fades across Lucy’s face. He’s probably imagining things, but Tim could swear that it starts from her shoulder, turning the skin pink all the way to where his hand is still resting. 

He sweeps his thumb lightly across her collarbone and feels her shiver at the featherlight touch. She’s smiling broadly at him, and he’s sure that he’s wearing a similar expression, can feel the way his cheeks are flushing warm and pushing up to his eyes. 

He brushes her skin again, just to feel the way his touch moves her, and breaks the silence between them with a raise of his eyebrows. 

“By the way, I don’t have a place here anymore, and I really don’t want to pay for a hotel in my own city. Any chance there’s a spot for me on your sofa until I find something?” 

“No. Absolutely not.” 

Tim scrutinizes Lucy’s expression, looking for any hint of humor or teasing, but finds none and his heart drops a little bit in his chest. 

He really thought he’d read this right, especially the way that Lucy leaned into his kiss just a moment ago. Before he can ask her anything else, though, she's talking again. 

“You think you can get me out of bed at 4 a.m. _on my day off,_ tell me that you drove all the way back from New York just to say you missed me, and expect to sleep on my couch?” 

Alright, so maybe he misread her signals. He pulls his hand back from her shoulder and leans away. 

“I can go find a hotel or something for the night. I’ll text Angela in a few hours, see if she and Wesley have a guest room I can take over. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’ll just-” 

He doesn’t get to finish his apology, tell her that he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable when he kissed her, ask if they can go back to what they had before he left. Tim was going to do all of those things, but before he can, Lucy is smacking him gently in the center of his chest. Her hand lingers before she pulls away, just long enough for him to notice the way she leaves her fingers over his heartbeat before the touch is gone. 

“I’m trying to get you to cuddle me, you jerk!” She looks at him, surprise etched across her face, and laughs lightly. “You’re not sleeping on the couch because I want you to sleep in my bed!” 

Oh. Maybe he wasn’t as far off base as he’d thought he was. Maybe he hasn’t crossed any boundaries tonight; maybe he’s just created some new ones, taken the relationship they’d had before and pushed it into a new, exciting territory they can explore together. 

“You want …” He trails off, hoping she’ll say it again. He’d go anywhere she asked him to, do anything she wanted, but he wants to hear her invite him into her bed again. He wants to hear her say it, wants to relive that feeling over and over again, starting right now. 

Lucy smiles at him, reaches for his hand again and makes his dream come true. 

“Yes! We can talk about the rest in the … afternoon, hopefully; if you’re going apartment hunting or what. But for now, I’m going back to bed, and I want you to come lay down with me and Kojo.” 

She stands up, still holding his hand, and pulls Tim closer to the edge of the couch. Lucy isn’t tall enough that he has to stand up or let go of her fingers, but he knows what the choice would be if he had to make it. 

_He never wants to stop holding her hand._

Tim swings their arms gently in the space between them, watches Lucy giggle a little bit and smiles before he takes a breath and presses his lips together. 

“You want me to stay?” He doesn’t just mean now, and he can read the understanding in Lucy’s eyes. She pulls on his hand, steps back and waits for him to stand up. 

When he’s facing her like this, he has to look down to see her. The top of her head is level with his shoulders, and his mind is instantly drawn to the idea of holding her against his chest, tucking her head underneath his chin and supporting her weight as she relaxes against him. 

But in order to hold her like that, he’d have to let go of her hand. And he’s not ready to do that yet. So instead, he smiles down at her, watches again as she understands exactly what he meant about staying. 

He wants to stay tonight, tomorrow, as long as she’ll let him; in her apartment, in her bed, in her heart. However she’ll have him, however long she’ll have him, he never wants to leave her again. Not if he can help it. 

“I want you to stay.” She steps toward him and rolls up onto the balls of her feet to kiss him again, bringing her free hand up to rest over his heart. He’s sure she can probably feel the way his heart is pounding, the way _she_ makes his heart pound. “But you’re not sleeping on the couch.” 

He chuckles and nods, letting her pull him toward the bedroom. Before they get to the doorway, though, she lets go of his hand. He wonders briefly what’s coming next, but doesn't have to wait long to find out, because she’s shrugging out of the hoodie, letting it drop somewhere on the floor, forgotten as soon as it’s off of her body. 

Tim forgets about it too, when he catches the first glimpse of her shoulders, her back around and between the thin straps of her tank top. He follows close behind her, Kojo right on his heels, and unzips his boots while she turns the light off. 

There’s just enough moonlight coming through her curtains that he can watch her pad across the room as he shimmies out of his jeans. Kojo hops up onto the mattress, curling himself into the space between their legs as Lucy lays down beside Tim. 

With the dog between them, he can’t hold her nearly as close as he’d like. Still, they’re able to situate themselves comfortably, her head resting on his chest and his arm around her shoulders. His fingers toy absently with the ends of her hair, and his free arm drapes across his stomach to reach for her hand again. She tangles their fingers together and smiles against his side, pressing a tiny kiss to his chest. 

They’re both exhausted, and he can feel the way her body goes lax almost as soon as they’ve finished arranging themselves. Tim only stays awake a little bit longer, taking in his surroundings, the feeling of her body pressed against his. He never wants to forget what this moment feels like, the first of many he hopes to find in his future. 

It took him two months and close to 6,000 miles to find his way here, but now that he knows where “here” is, he never wants to be anywhere else, wouldn’t trade a minute of his journey for all the sunsets and skylines in the world. Nothing could ever compare to this, to lying here with Lucy in his arms and Kojo at his feet. 

As his eyes close again, Tim sighs and considers how different it feels to be starting this, compared to the new life he’d thought he was starting when he left Los Angeles. 

He thinks about it as the heavy pull of sleep draws him in, and the only words he can find, the only way he can think of to describe the easy comfort he feels now, how perfect and simple and _right_ this moment is? 

It’s exactly what the start of forever should feel like. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that! Questions? Comments? Concerns? Thoughts? You know what to do with 'em. 
> 
> xoxo

**Author's Note:**

> Planning Saturday/Tuesday updates! Everything is written, it's just a matter of getting it posted.


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